The Greenflow was primarily fed by ice melt from the mountains. It ran through the hollows from the southwest to the northeast, curving slightly more east before emptying into the Iron River—which made its meandering way to the Iron Bay and eventually out into the ocean.
In the higher elevations, nestled between the Greenflow and the Darkmoon Vale, was a small lumber and trading town called Falcon’s Hollow. The town had a palisade wall of dark wooden logs, some of which seemed in a rather bleak state of disrepair. Kallik was used to having walls around his hometown—he’d been born and raised in the capital city of Kal-Drovak, where the surrounding walls were on average forty feet tall and ten feet thick, well-built by the same dwarves who constructed the Great Ziggurat. Compared to those, the palisade around Falcon’s Hollow looked like a fence that had given up trying. The security of the town clearly wasn’t a top priority.
Case in point: the lone guard slumped in a single chair at the gate, snoring rather loudly with his neck bent at an angle Kallik was sure he’d regret upon waking. Once he passed through the gate, Kallik was assailed by the sounds, smells, and bustle of the town—or more specifically, the lack thereof. No vendors crowded the major streets. No criers called out the news. No beggars or orphans plodded around seeking alms.
There were beggars and orphans, but they seemed to huddle in the alleys and against the walls, staring at Kallik as though he were some monstrous creature who’d invaded their home, rather than a potential merchant they might beg a few coins from. All in all, the small town felt deserted. The only sounds punctuating the still air were the occasional wet, wheezing coughs and the distant baying of hounds.
To the northwest rose a higher area of the town, surrounded by its own palisade wall—this one in slightly better condition. It seemed to be the only place with buildings of over two stories. Beyond that, Kallik knew the river was somewhere to the east, and if he were to pass through town and head northwest, he’d find the lumber camps for which Falcon’s Hollow was supposedly famous. As it was mid-morning, it seemed likely that most of the lumber workers were already beyond the gates.
As Kallik wandered deeper into the settlement, the rhythmic sound of a blacksmith’s hammer echoed in the distance to the east, giving the place at least some semblance of a working village. That was when Kallik found his first able-bodied, non-destitute, awake resident.
“Excuse me?” Kallik said, getting the girl’s attention as she crossed from one side of the street to the other. She took one look at him—eyes traveling up and down his body before finally meeting his gaze—and then promptly turned around and hurried off in the opposite direction. Kallik frowned, watching her run off, disappointed that the only visible person had completely ignored him—or, worse, fled.
At the crossroads—a part of town centered on a large oak tree where the road split between the southern gate he’d entered, the northern gate presumably leading to the lumber camps, a path up to the higher, walled-off section of town, and another road heading east toward the Greenflow—Kallik was rewarded with a line of people. Clearly, the eastern road was busier. Even beyond the line, he could see folks moving between buildings on their daily business.
He checked each building as he headed east, looking for one called Roots and Remedies—an alchemist’s shop, whose summons was the reason he’d come to Falcon’s Hollow in the first place. He was about to ask one of the residents standing in line for directions when he realized the sign on the buildings clearly stated he’d arrived at his destination.
Creeping ivy and full window boxes covered the facade of the rugged-looking, two-story shop bearing the faded aforementioned sign. The man at the front of the line was pounding on the door. He paused for a moment to hack up a few dry coughs into his fist before pounding on the door again and yelling out for the shopkeeper on the other side to open up.
The next person in line looked considerably more ill. She barely moved, appearing lethargic, her face pale as she stared blankly at the back of the man pounding on the door. As sick as the woman looked, the child in her arms looked worse—a young girl of three or four. Her hair was thick and matted, her skin pale, her eyes unfocused, and dried blood spattered her face, primarily under her nose and mouth. As heart-wrenching as the sight of the girl—whose sole focus in life was clinging to her mother and breathing—was, that same scene was repeated multiple times down the line of about twenty townsfolk, each waiting their turn to pound on the closed door.
Looking over the two-story building, Kallik backtracked a few shops until he found an alley. Counting the doors until he reached what he was fairly certain was the back of Roots and Remedies, he pounded on that door. From inside came muffled swearing, a couple of thumps from someone stumbling around, and then the sound of an interior lock being undone. The door swung open almost violently, revealing a tall, gaunt, dark-skinned woman gripping a brass-capped club raised high in a threatening manner. She yelled: “I swear to the gods, if you’re here to buy something, you’re going to need more than just—...”
The woman halted mid-threat, club still raised. It was the eyes. It was always the eyes. As Kallik had ventured further from the larger cities, he’d found people responded to his eye color in a variety of ways. Many assumed he was a Fire Islander—likely the reason the previous woman he’d seen had turned and bolted. The denizens of the Fire Isles had long ago taken over the country of Ironhold. While city folk tended not to mind so much, the more remote the settlement, the fewer people were indifferent.
The woman’s face cycled through several emotions, though the club remained aloft. Finally, she seemed to find her voice. “Who are you?”
Kallik held up the piece of paper he’d discovered in the city of Berkhanstead. It claimed that Laurel, the proprietor of Roots and Remedies in Falcon’s Hollow, was seeking help to cure a plague of blackscour taint.
The woman—likely Laurel—stared at the printed notice for a while before lowering her club. In a calmer, if still wary, tone, she asked,
“And you are…?”
Kallik lowered the paper and gave a slight smile. “I’m Kallik, acolyte of the Ritter Litteratti out of Kal-Drovak.”
“Kal-Drovak?” The woman’s eyebrows rose. “There’s no way you could’ve come from Kal-Drovak. There’s no way my plea for help could’ve made it there.”
Kallik shrugged. “I was in Berkhanstead when I found it.”
The woman twisted her lips, evidently thinking, then asked the question Kallik expected. “A Fire Islander?”
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It was a common question. Kallik’s eyes were red like those of the Fire Isles, though he lacked the accent. He could imitate one if needed—after all, he’d grown up in the Embers—but he was not a Fire Islander. No, he was simply “steel-born.”
“Humph. Fine. Get in.” The woman stepped out of the doorway, allowing him to enter. Kallik carefully threaded his spear through the doorway so as not to bump anything. If the smell wafting through the door to the outside had been pungent, the smell inside the room was nearly overpowering. He sucked in a deep breath through his teeth and tried not to choke on the thick air.
The door was shut behind him and the lock thrown. It took a bit for Kallik’s eyes to adjust to the dark room, but when they did, he found exactly what he would have expected from the den of an herbalist—just on a scale two or three times larger. Bundles of herbs hung from the ceiling rafters; every shelf was loaded to a point of dangerously overflowing with various ingredients, equipment, and other bric-à-brac whose purpose Kallik couldn’t fathom. A cluttered table held all manner of cooking utensils and alchemy equipment. The severe woman returned to stirring a cauldron boiling over a flame on an iron stove, and the distant pounding on the front door could be heard through the entry to the next room—likely where the front desk was.
Kallik attempted to lean his spear against the wall in the only spot he could find where it wouldn’t touch anything, then dropped his pack.
“Can you magically cure disease?” Laurel practically barked at him.
“No.” The woman shot him a look as though he was probably wasting her time. “I was hoping other people would have come to help. I’m not the only one who has showed up, right?”
The twisted expression of frustration that crossed her face told him the answer.
“I suppose I didn’t list a reward, because I don’t have one to give. Better question is, why did you think it was a good idea to come all the way out here?”
Kallik shrugged. “I’m an acolyte of the Ritter Litteratti. It seemed like a good thing to do.”
Laurel cocked an eyebrow at him. “What does attempting to help a town with a sickness—when you have no skills to deal with such a thing—have to do with being a librarian?”
Kallik tried to hide a grimace. “Uh, more about going into the world and trying to do good while…gaining levels and skills.”
“Humph,” Laurel huffed again. She motioned her chin toward his spear. “So what are you, a warrior?”
“Level-one wizard,” Kallik responded.
The woman paused a moment, the stirring of her bubbling cauldron seemingly forgotten as she looked Kallik over askance.
“A wizard? You don’t look like a wizard.”
It was a normal response. People usually pictured old men with thin frames hunched over a book when they thought of wizards. Kallik gave the woman a grin and held up a hand. “Level-one wizard, I promise.”
“Fine. What do you know about making potions?”
“I’ve had a few courses, but it’s not something I’ve mastered yet.”
“Do you know what a quarter vial is?”
Kallik acknowledged he did, and Laurel set him to collecting a tray full of small vials and a funnel as she pulled her cauldron off the heater. She gave a short yell at whoever was still banging on her front door before attempting to clear off a space on her worktable. Then, reigniting the conversation with a single question, she asked: “Do you know what Blackscour Taint is?”
“Not a clue.”
“Blackscour is a mushroom, a fungus that likes to grow in wet places,” Laurel explained. “Not necessarily native here, and it’s pretty much good for nothing. Bitter and sharp, it’s not really an issue unless you eat it or drink the water it lives in. Blackscour Taint is the disease you get when you do. Essentially, the fungus ends up in your stomach and crawls into your lungs, where it thrives in the warm, moist environment, slowly consuming you from the inside out. Your body tries to hack up the fungus, and then you slowly cough yourself to death.”
Kallik grimaced as Laurel continued stirring the pot while adding a few extra salts.
“I’ve tried everything,” she said. “Nothing’s curing it—not even what’s in my granny’s old tome, the one she got from a damned witch she supposedly traded her eyesight for. I found the well, so the spread is stopped. But anyone infected is basically already dying.”
“So, without being a higher-level cleric or knowing a specific cure for this disease,” Kallik asked, uncorking small vials and preparing them to be filled, “there’s nothing I can actually do to help, is there?”
“No,” Laurel said, pressing her lips together, then hesitating. “Well…maybe.”
Kallik waited a few moments before the woman continued. “There’s a recipe in my granny’s old book—fairly certain it was written afterward by someone else. Honestly, it sounds like a whole lot of hooju to me. I have most of the ingredients, but I’m short three things, all of which might be able to… I don’t know. There’s some darkwood moss—which, according to my granny’s book, can be found on the oldest tree in the Vale. A pickled herb called rat’s tail, which I’ve never even heard of. And the final ingredient I need is an iron mushroom, which tends to grow in the mountains near iron veins. It’s a favorite among dwarves, but I don’t have any, and I don’t know where to get them. Again, the whole recipe sounds like hooey to me, but if you could find those things, I suppose it’s worth a shot.”
“How much time do we have?” Kallik asked. It seemed like the most reasonable question, given he’d have to go search the forest or somewhere else for the ingredients.
Laurel let out a humorless chortle. “There’s no time. People are already dying. At this point, we’re just trying to spare the gravedigger the extra work.”
“Oh,” Kallik said. “I guess I should start looking then. Do you know where I should begin?”
Laurel looked him in his red eyes as though trying to gauge his honesty. “Millen Roddale. He should be working at the Lumber Consortium camp. He’s the most experienced woodsman I know. If anyone knows where to find that stuff, it’s him. My guess is that rat’s tail, the pickled herb, might be at Uza’s hut—the witch. I don’t trust her, but I don’t think she’s as bad as most of these ingrates make her out to be.”
Kallik nodded. “All right, I guess I’ll get going.”
“No,” Laurel blurted.
“No?” Kallik echoed.
“No,” Laurel affirmed. “You’re not from around here. My guess is, you’ll just get lost wandering around, and the longer you stall, the more people die. Ten copper.”
“Ten copper?” Kallik asked, confusion creeping into his voice and evident on his light-brown face.
“Ten copper, and I can get you an introduction to someone who might be able to navigate the forest. I sure as hell can’t help with that, and I ain’t going,” Laurel said.
“All right—ten copper,” Kallik agreed, beginning to fish out his coins. Making a small pile of copper and steel.
Laurel took the money, ordered him to keep filling vials, and disappeared out the back door. She reappeared a couple of minutes later and inspected Kallik’s work. With a nod of satisfaction, she told him to wait there and continue filling as she made her way to the front room. There, she finally opened the front door and promptly launched into a heated argument with the man who had been beating on her entryway for the last thirty minutes or so.
Kallik kept working until he ran out of vials. He waited for a lull in Laurel’s seemingly endless tirade against her own would-be customers. Between the woman’s attitude and the fact that she had sent a plea for help out of town, Kallik mentally placed her somewhere on the “caring old lady” spectrum—certainly not the sweet, gentle grandmother type, but more of the tough-love, harsh-words-yet-still-caring figure. She seemed to have no qualms about fleecing every copper from those townsfolk she deemed hypochondriacs while simultaneously doing everything she could for the genuinely ill.
Unfortunately, there were a great many genuinely ill. The number of children clinging to their parents—who in turn pleaded with the herbalist to save them—was heartbreaking. By Laurel’s own words, anything Kallik might do to help would merely spare the gravedigger a bit of effort if he could find the ingredients in time... if they even existed in this area... if he could do it fast enough to be useful... and if the potion actually worked.
It was a lot of “ifs.” For Kallik’s first act of goodwill in the wider world, this one was likely to have a sad ending either way. Hopefully, it wouldn’t be a complete loss.